our sanctuary {day 20}

It’s been an interesting past couple of days.

We’ve returned home from our vacation, our toddler is still on Eastern time, we had a funeral to attend today, and our house is a disaster zone. No joke about the disaster zone part.

Piles of laundry, every surface covered in dust, no groceries, no semblance of peacefulness, a hundred tasks on the to-do list, flooring guys banging floor boards into place and a toddler who’s overtired and very needy. Not to mention she just spit up regurgitated milk all over her car seat. UGH!

It’s enough even to make my laid back head spin.

I’m pushing through, holding on to the promises, and doing one task at a time. Trying my darndest not to succumb to the temptation to sit back and avoid the reality that is spilled about me.

But adding to the chaos of returning home was realizing that we had a funeral to attend. I made reference to the fact that someone was ill here but I never really chatted much about it. Sometimes when we don’t have long heritages of believing family we inherit “spiritual grandparents.” Mary Ann and Eileen have been in my life since I was married. They taught a “homemaking group” through our church which has really just become a “sit and soak up knowledge” kind of a time 7 years later. But both in their late 70’s, early 80’s, they have been more than just “grandparents.” They’ve been faithfully showing me how to be a wife, how to be a mother, how to be a woman who puts her trust in Jesus.

After a battle with cancer, Mary Ann’s husband is at the feet of Jesus. After having watched someone die, front row seat to his immediate children grieving while standing beside my mother as she grieved the death of her husband, there’s an ache in my heart as to what’s ahead for Mary Ann’s family. We, the girls of Titus 2, will miss him, but there’s an ache a family feels when a loved one has passed.

And he wasn’t just any ordinary man. He was a living and breathing example of how to abide in Jesus. He was faithful to his calling as a man, husband, father and grandfather. And we knew this firsthand in enjoying his company and more so, through the eyes of his wife. The stories she shared and the love she had for him was incredibly evident. Their marriage is an example of one we can only hope to have. A legacy we can only hope to live.

We are blessed to know them, I’m blessed to have these incredible examples of faithful servants in my life. So we’re celebrating where he is and our hearts are heavy for the days ahead for his family and we’re abiding in Jesus, knowing He’s enough.

For all this mess and all this loss and all this heartache.

Abiding means one foot after another we can move forward.

Because He’s enough.